Twitter trolls are the worst, but when you combine them with vicious bullies and racist misogynists – well you get the perfect storm of hate speech, all done by cowards behind a computer screen.
Since the opening of Ghostbusters, Leslie Jones has been subject to some of the most vile, incredibly offensive and downright disgusting tweets about her, all for no reason.
Her twitter page has been silent since she last tweeted, “I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart,” the SNL cast member then followed up with another tweet, “All this cause I did a movie. You can hate the movie but the s—I got today. Wrong.”
Jones immediately received an outpouring of support from fans and celebrities using the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ which began trending on twitter. Just a day after reporting the hateful attacks, twitter finally made an announcement that it had taken action against a few users, one of them being the conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, the tech editor of Breitbart. Shortly after that, another hashtag started trending, this time conservative users and fans called for twitter to lift its ban, asking them to #FreeMilo.
Um, Whhatttt? This begs the question, at what point is free speech confused with targeted, violent and racially specific harassment?
They say #FreeMilo, we say #ByeMilo.
Luckily twitter is standing their ground and in a statement to ABC News, they wrote “People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.”
Well, thank you twitter for taking a stand against this, and we really hope Leslie comes back to twitter to bless us all with her hilarity.